Anyone done the higher English prelim yet? I know the close reading was supposedly on astrology and very hard but no idea about the critical reading. Anyone have a clue?
Critical essay if u did prose fiction one question is how character is isolated if u did poetry for scottish texts Mccaig it’s visiting hour and compassion for 10 marker
The higher english prelim was the hardest prelim. Nearly everyone in my year failed so don’t be disappointed if you get lower than you hoped. I know someone who went from a band 1 A to 20% due to that paper. However you need to keep in mind the prelims are purposefully harder! don’t lose hope
Do u remember any of the questions/answers i haven’t done it yet! would be appreciated
Sorry, I meant the theme for the 10 mark question for the Duffy poems.
For the 10 marker you don't specifically get a theme always. It might ask you about for example, ' how the poet uses language to convey sympathy' in multiple poems. But you are able to analyse them by stating common themes within them that relate to the poems if that makes sense.
Online people were saying valentine and the 10 marker was asking me about how her issues have deeper meanings Or that it was war photographer and the question was isolated character
I did my Higher English last year and found the prelim difficult and had very low marks. Most of my class didn't appreciate the step up from NAT5 to Higher and many failed the prelim as they were just not ready and didn't have the skills for a Higher English exam yet. Looking back NAT5 was ridiculously easy in comparison, Higher asks a lot more of you in all of the different components. By the time of the final exam, if most of us had gone back and sat the same prelim we would have scored much higher. It wasn't the prelim that was too hard, we didn't have the skills yet and in all honestly had not prepared enough.
Don't worry too much, take it as warning you need to understand what is required at Higher and you need to study and practice the skills needed. I was terrible at English so spent more time studying it than any of my other subjects, it isn't easy unless you read a lot of challenging texts normally or you are just a natural at it. The marking instructions on the SQA site for past papers is a good place to start for RUAE and Scottish Text which is a similar skill. Also work through some of the revision guides (How to pass, Brightred, Leckie etc) as they show you how to break down text, answer RUAE questions fully and get those extra marks. Start reading challenging texts from quality newspapers or magazines now on different subjects, at least one every other day, so you get used to them and don't panic when you get a tough one, it does make a difference.
For my school we did the P&N 2022 English prelim paper. The RUAE component was a passage about astrology. The 5 marker at the end was about how both writers agreed astrology was harmful and all around bad. There was a 4 mark effective conclusion question. The rest of the marks where to do with Language and Own Words. They were pretty generic questions. It was funny because lots of girls in my year are into astrology and wore crystals and other "charms" into the exam, only for the paper to shun them 😂
For the Scottish Set Text my class looked at "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" The extract was from chapter 4 of the novella - from about where it says "chocolate coloured pall lowered over heaven" to the bit when the old lady is excited about Mr Hyde, ending a bit after "evil face smoothed by Hypocrisy". The 10 mark commonality questions was about Stevenson's use of (I forgot exactly what it technique(s) it was, my bad) to convey the violence and evil in the city.
The essay component had 3 questions, per whatever type of text you were studying. My class did "Othello", and so we answered from the "Drama" questions. Unfortunately I do not remember the questions for other text types. They were (approximately - I have included the focus of the question, the wording will be a bit off) as follows:
A play in which there is conflict between 2 characters. A play in which a key scene is important in the fate of the characters or the course of the play. A play in which there is a theme of appearance versus reality. (There were some other themes similar to this one, but I don't remember them.
This is a late reply, I recognise a lot of schools have sat their prelims already. If you see this post before your prelims, I wish you good luck
Anyone done the higher English prelim yet? I know the close reading was supposedly on astrology and very hard but no idea about the critical reading. Anyone have a clue?
You would have probably done the prelim by now. And I just want to say that the astrology RUAE paper was absolutely horrible, might even be the worst paper that I have ever done in my life - I only got 13/30 but did end up getting bang on 60% because I did better on my Scottish Set text and Critical Essay. Even my teachers said that the RUAE paper was horrible, and it would never be that hard in the exam, so fingers crossed that the paper will be alright in May. Also best of luck to everyone for their upcoming English exam. 😄